Summer projects

Well, I finally got started on my summer projects. I have a few pictures, but not many. I’ll update this once Reid is back from California with our camera!

Project 1. I replaced two sets of steps leading from the deck. I based the design on the steps Tony helped us to build some years ago. Michael helped me to pick up the wood, and helped with some measuring, sawing and advice. Some of it was truly difficult – like attaching the darn things to the deck. Figured it out finally. So what if they’re not level!

Now that they’re all done, I like to stroll up and down them. “See how nice and wide they are? See how comfortable they are to stride up and down. Reid, are you sure you wouldn’t want to try going up and down them a few more times?”

Project 2. Re-stain the deck (and the new steps!). They have to be re-stained every few years. It’s all done!

Project 3. Paint the mirror over our dining room hutch. It’s actually one of the windows from the 2nd storey that I asked be saved when we had the windows replaced. The old windows were those older 4-pane windows that I simply loved, but no one installs any more (even if they did, I’m sure I couldn’t afford it). I had the glass replaced with mirror and it’s been sitting on my hutch for more than a year. I tried to paint it to look a little like the hutch (so that it looks like wood). Well, I screwed something up and it came out much darker than the hutch (which is maple). I think I like it. I’m not exactly sure. I’ll give it a few days before I decide whether I should urethane it, or scrap it and start over!

Project 4. This is the kicker. Our siding sucks big time. The back of the house, especially nearest the pool, is peeling big time. It’s not aluminum siding – some kind of crappy coating on something that approximates wood. Since the other 3 sides of the house are somewhat ok, I decided to paint this side and see if I can put off getting new siding. I’m aiming to start this while Reid is in California. It’s not going to be easy as it’s the 2nd storey of the house.

Project 5. I don’t want this project, but it won’t go away. I noticed some water leaking out of the overhang (from the 2nd floor) onto the deck. I’ve been ignoring it for a while, in the useless hope that it would go away. Finally ripped out some aluminum siding from the overhang and found, to my dismay, tons of water soaking into the insulation. Hard to tell where the water comes from, but I think it’s coming down the toilet stack, which is not in the overhang portion of the house but in the house proper. Anway, it means I’m going to have to go into the attic to find where the leak is. I hate going up there. It’s going to be really bad because we had extra insulationblown up there. Dang it all. (Along with the common skipped-all-my-university-math-classes-and-now-there’s-an-exam nightmares I have from time to time, I also get water-leaking-into-the-house-causing-irreparable-damage nightmares. I know I’m weird, but that goes to show how much I hate this particular project.)

That ceiling was never properly fixed. The best he’d do was replace that section with sheetrock when the leak started to come through, which it did at least once a year, usually in the spring.

To be fair, once, he had the roof reshingled, claiming that would take care of the problem (it didn’t), but he never tried to trace the water-flow itself. He claimed he was a building contractor, but he also claimed he’d bribe the housing inspector to overlook violations.